It is a perfect track and is one of my all-time favorite Jaco performances. “As the final track on Heavy Weather, it’s one of those tunes on one of those albums that, when you’ve finished listening to it, you want to listen to the entire recording from the beginning all over again. Everything was improvised in that moment-it’s almost no overdubs.” Perhaps Peter Erskine, who succeeded Acuña in Weather Report, sums it up best. When I hear that tune, I still get the chills. As drummer Alex Acuña told Joe Zawinul biographer Brian Glasser, “I think my favorite is ‘Havona.’ That, for me, is how I always want to play, that kind of a conversation. Meanwhile, angular changes provide fodder for the consensus baddest bass guitar solo ever put to tape. Strikingly fresh and uninhibited, the track dances and soars on an ear-grabbing bass line, partnered with a sizzling drum groove. The preeminent “Havona” version came a year later, for Weather Report’s 1977 epic, Heavy Weather. A raw version featuring Herbie Hancock, Lenny White, and Don Alias was recorded for Jaco’s 1976 landmark solo debut, but it was not included. A chapter in the book describes “Havona” as the master galaxy (which contains Earth)-and as a perfect universe consisting of a billion spheres of unimagined beauty. Among Jaco’s bass anthems, when it comes to the triple-threat combination of composition, bass line, and solo, none stands quite as tall as “Havona.” Pastorius originally wrote the tune in late 1973, while under the spiritual influence of The Urantia Book.
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